The Philosophy of Gassendi

Volume Vi

Epistulae et responsa. pp. 545.

The whole of Gassendi’s writings is thus contained in six Volumes folio, with a total of 4095 double-columned pages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(I.) The edition of the works to which reference is always made in this book is the edition of 1658 (Lyon). This contains all Gassendi’s works (some slightly abridged), except some letters. On this point see Thomas, p. 28: ‘Celles qui ont été recueillies par M. de Montmor forment le sixième volume du Syntagma: mais leur nombre a été considerablement augmenté depuis, bien que beaucoup restent encore à publier. (Voy. “Documents inédits sur Gassendi,” par Tamizey de Larroque: Revue des questions historiques, 1877, t. xxii. “Oraison funèbre de P. Gassendi,” par Nicolas Taxil, publiée par le même, 1882. “Impressions de voyage de Pierre Gassendi,” dans le Bulletin de la Société scientifique et littéraire des Basses-Alpes, 1887.)’ I have no personal knowledge of these documents.

(II.) Bernier, the traveller, a friend of Gassendi, compiled an Abrégé de la Philosophie de Gassendi, 8 vols., 1678; 2nd ed., 7 vols., 1684. This work is naturally far less cumbersome than Gassendi’s own volumes. It is difficult to say quite what is wrong with it, but it is certainly wholly misleading, and, having been read to avoid the trouble of studying the original, has done much harm. I began with this work myself, but, after once looking into Gassendi, abandoned it. There is a wholly different atmosphere about Gassendi’s writing, and perhaps the kindest criticism is to say that Bernier had more zeal as a friend than ability as a philosopher.

(III.) The only book on Gassendi which I have read is La Philosophie de Gassendi, par P.-Félix Thomas, Paris, 1889. I have read this since completing my own account of Gassendi, and owe to it some useful hints and references. Had it been other than it is, I should not have been justified in publishing a second study on the same subject. But the author seems to me to have done less than justice to Gassendi: he does not seem to have considered him an integral part of philosophy as a moving body of thought. Perhaps he is right, but to me Gassendi appears to have done more than patch up Epicurus: he has tried to unite the results, not only of philosophy in the narrower sense, but of all previous and contemporary thought into one whole, as consistent as he thought it could be. Hence we differ; but the student of Gassendi will get more insight into Gassendi from Thomas than he will from Bernier, and find this the conscientious work of one who has gone for his information to the fountain-head.

(IV.) For the rest, I know of no other ‘literature of the subject.’ For the Life, Sorbière’s Sketch (vol. I.) is the chief authority. There is also a Vie de Gassendi by Bugerel (1737), and by Damiror (Mémoire sur Gassendi, 1839). The best short account of Gassendi’s philosophy is that of Ritter, to which I have referred elsewhere (p. 17).

(V.) The manuscripts of Gassendi have been preserved, the majority at Tours, some in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and some in Provence (Thomas, p. 28). The edition of 1658, though published after the author’s death, represents his final corrections, and is acknowledged to be substantially accurate.

INTRODUCTION

The line of thought which terminates in Gassendi began in Leucippus. The principal names in the history of its exposition are unfortunately little more than names, and in the case of both the main periods we are dependent on what may be called the second strings for the majority of our information. Thus of Leucippus we know but little, and he is usually taken in conjunction with Democritus, in order that together they may fill out a paragraph in the history of thought: similarly, while we are better off in the case of Epicurus, we none the less find it most convenient not to speak of Epicurus but of Epicureanism, and so give ourselves the latitude of using all the matter that can be collected from the whole school, in which the name of Lucretius stands forth prominently. As we desire to show the development of the subject we shall here try to keep the main points of the different epochs distinct: it will then be apparent how the theory grew and changed in face of new problems and changing conditions.

Atomism and Epicureanism are very different things, but the beginnings of the theory of Epicurus are to be found in the atomic school, and the differences will be best understood if the growth of that doctrine is followed. The founder was Leucippus of Elea or Miletus. His standpoint does not seem to have been properly understood by historians of philosophy, but recent investigation has cleared our views on the significance of his language. He was in the first instance an Eleatic, and though the main principle of the Eleatic school, the unity and immovability of the One, seems so entirely opposed to the atomistic trend of thought that they could have nothing to do with each other, we find that in fact the opposition is not so great as appears at first sight, and the atomistic view is generated out of the Eleatic. In this interpretation we are guided by Aristotle, who says, ‘Leucippus however thought he had a theory which was in harmony with sense-perception and did not do away with coming into being and passing away, nor motion nor the multiplicity of things. He made this concession to experience, while he conceded on the other hand to those who invented the One, that motion was impossible without the void, that the void was not real, and that nothing of what was real was not real! For,’ said he, ‘that which is strictly speaking real is an absolute plenum; but the plenum is not one. On the contrary, there are an infinite number of them, and they are invisible owing to the smallness of their bulk. They move in the void (for there is a void), and by their coming together they effect coming into being: by their separation, passing away.’

Atomism is thus at its birth the opposite which Eleaticism generates: the principles of Parmenides are retained, but the One to which they are applied is no longer the only One, not the Whole, but a whole: ‘to each of the atoms which he thus arrived at, he ascribed all the predicates of the Eleatic One’ (Burnet, op. cit. 355). The result was a pluralism which avoided the dialectic of Zeno of Elea: the attempts which had been made to combine the two notions of a continuum and divisibility had failed because they inevitably led to the abyss of endless division: it was obvious that if the continuum could be divided anywhere it could be divided everywhere and finally elude us altogether, and there was no way out of the difficulty but to stand by common sense and declare the ultimate indivisible. Two points are interesting in this connexion: the first is the fact that the earliest form of Atomism is grounded in the opposition of a common-sense view to its contemporary idealism, a heritage of strife to be handed on from generation to generation: the second is the very partial nature of the severance from idealistic modes of thought. At this stage of thought no one blushes to make reality a predicate, but the limitations of language bring us to a dilemma: the void is declared real and not real, and the difficulty lies in the substantive use of ‘is’: for the void is, but is not what is called real: it must therefore belong to a class of existents which we shall call the not-real: with all the sturdy common-sense of a reformer Leucippus says the categories must be made for the things and not things for the category. Henceforth the old reality was to be absorbed into a new Reality which included both the real and the not-real of the former category. The gist of all this argumentation can be expressed in the phrase ‘the non-corporeal is as real as the corporeal.’ This was first proclaimed by those who are usually regarded as materialists! For the rest we know that creation was explained through the collision of the atoms, in which atoms of like shape and form became entangled, and from these entanglements of atoms arose the heavenly bodies. Thus much we may safely attribute to Leucippus, and if any one doubts the reality of Leucippus, it is enough for our purpose that he should stand for Atomism before Democritus. This stage must certainly be distinguished, else we lose the significance of that form of the doctrine in which we have as yet no subjective elements and no attempt to think of the atom as in any sense analysable.

II.

With Democritus we find atomism has undergone a very important change, it has developed from a mere sketch of a cosmogony to at least the rudiments of a philosophy. By this we mean that it recognises a far wider range of topics, and at least attempts to give explanations of phenomena not touched by the theory in its original form. The two main influences to be noticed in this connection are those denoted by the names of Protagoras and Anaxagoras. From Protagoras comes the subjective tendency of the doctrine, while the work of Anaxagoras has brought into prominence the question of causality and its incidence. The idea of ‘homoiomerae’ has also expressed a possible theory of the nature of the ultimate parts of the material world which is sufficiently near to atomism to compel the true atomist to define his position more exactly.

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